Consumption Structural Upgrading and Export Quality Improvement
Promoting consumption upgrading and fostering new export advantages are two important strategies for maintaining China's sustained and stable economic development.Given the decelerating global economic growth and escalating internal and external uncertainties,the Chinese economy confronts multifaceted risks and challenges.On the one hand,the role of consumption in driving economic growth continues to be pronounced,with domestic demand gradually becoming a distinct feature of China's high-quality economic development.On the other hand,promoting stable and high-quality foreign trade is a crucial task for the current phase of economic stability and development,particularly under the critical rise of trade protectionism.Enhancing the quality of Chinese export products and fostering new competitive advantages in exports are urgent imperatives for sustaining the stability of China's exports.In August 2019,the National Development and Reform Commission convened the first meeting of the Inter-Ministerial Joint Conference on Improving the Institutional Mechanism for Promoting Consumption.During the meeting,it was emphasized that expanding and enhancing consumption can help transition economic growth dynamics and is an inevitable requirement for achieving high-quality development.Thus,the role of consumption upgrading in promoting the optimization and upgrading of economic structure cannot be overlooked.This study investigates the impact of the upgrading of the consumption structure on the quality of exports from the demand side based on the instrumental variable estimation,using the Chinese family panel database and customs database from 2010 to 2014.The results reveal that a percentage point increase in the proportion of urban expenditure on high-end consumer goods increases the relative quality of urban export products by four percentage points,and the estimation results are very robust.Thus,the upgrading of the consumption structure can significantly improve the quality of exports.This not only provides empirical evidence for the strategy of"promoting consumption upgrading to drive high-quality development"but also offers new policy insights for cultivating new competitive advantages in exports.Further analysis reveals that there are two mechanisms for the effect of consumption upgrading,including stimulating urban enterprise innovation and upgrading urban industrial structure.The analysis of the impact path reveals that the upgrading of the consumption structure promotes the replacement of high-and low-quality products,which promotes the improvement of the quality of export products,implying that consumption upgrading mainly promotes export quality through the channel of extensive marginal.Heterogeneity analysis reveals that,at the product level,the upgrading of the consumption structure mainly contributes to the improvement of the quality of exports of medium-and low-skill technology products,as well as capital and consumer goods.At the level of export destination countries,the upgrading of the consumption structure improves the quality of products exported from China to developed countries.At the regional level,the improvement effect is mainly in high-income regions in China,while the promotion effect is not significant in low-income regions,where the upgrading of the consumption structure is limited.The government should enhance the role of consumption upgrading in promoting economic restructuring,optimizing production structure through consumption upgrading,and thus improving the high-quality development of China's economy.On the one hand,the government should continue to improve the domestic supply system of high-quality products and build a modern industrial system by cultivating major industries based on market demand.On the other hand,it should further optimize the consumer environment,promote the expansion and improvement of the quality of consumption,and enhance the fundamental role of consumption in economic development.Further,it should take various measures to promote the reasonable growth of the incomes of urban and rural residents.
Consumption Structural UpgradingQuality of Export ProductEnterprise InnovationUpgrading of Industrial Structure
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